Single Question. Whether Man’s Free Choice without Grace can Guard against all Mortal Sin

1. Concerning the twenty eighth distinction I aska about the error of Pelagius, namely whether man’s free choice without grace can guard against all mortal sin.

a. a[Interpolation] About this twenty eighth distinction, where the Master deals with the insufficiency of free choice without grace, the question is asked:

2. That it can:

Romans 2.14, “The nations who do not have the law naturally do the things that are of the law, and not having such law are a law unto themselves.” Here it seems that the Apostle is rebuking the Jews because the Gentiles, without having the law given them, were keeping the law;     therefore they were guarding against all sin and yet it seems they did not have grace.

3. Further, Augustine On Free Choice 3.18 n.17, “No one sins in something he cannot avoid;” some sin cannot be avoided;a therefore etc     .

a. a[Interpolation] so either someone can avoid sin without grace or he cannot; if he cannot, then he does not sin; if he can then I have the conclusion intended. Or: so what cannot be avoided is not a sin.

4. Again Anselm On Liberty of Choice ch.13, “Free choice is a power of keeping rightness for its own sake;” therefore while free choice remains, so does its power.

5. On the contrary:

The Pelagian heresy seems to consist in this, that free choice suffices without grace.

6. Again, this heresy seems to have been very strongly rebuked by Augustine On the Perfection of Justice [Henry of Ghent Quodlibet 5.20: “Some heretics said that man in mortal sin could, without grace, endure and no more sin mortally.. .which Augustine sufficiently rejects against the Pelagians, especially in On the Perfection of Justice”].

7. Again, Gregory Moralia 25.9 n.22 on the verse of Job 34.24-25 ‘He will destroy many and uncountable.’ says, “A sin that is not destroyed by penance soon by its weight draws toward another.”

I. To the Question

A. The Opinion of Others, Proposed in Two Versions

8. Here, because of the words of Augustine that he brings against the Pelagians, the assertion is made [by Aquinas, Henry, Richard of Middleton] that it is not possible to guard against all sin without grace.

9. But this is put forward in diverse ways:

In one way that free choice could avoid individual mortal sins without grace but not all of them. An example is given about being in a leaking ship, that although one could stop up any single hole yet not all of them; for while one hole is being stopped another is left open.

10. In another way it is said that free choice can be considered doubly: in one way before deliberation and before time for deliberation, or in another way after both (namely after time for deliberation and after the deliberation itself); or in a third way, after time for deliberation has passed but when no deliberation was done. In the first way it is posited that one cannot sin mortally but one can sin venially. In the second way it is posited that one can avoid all mortal sin after deliberation has been done. In the third way it is posited that one cannot, if one is in mortal sin, avoid every mortal sin; the reason is the deficiency in the intellect before the time of deliberating, because of which one will not deliberate rightly even though one passes through the time when there could have been deliberation; and so, if one does not deliberate when one is going through the time suitable for deliberation, one will be understood to have given consent.

B. Rejection of the Opinion

1. Against the Conclusion in Itself

11. There is argument against this, and first against the conclusion [n.8], because mortal sin consists only in transgressing God’s precept, according to Augustine Against Faustus 22.27, and it is contained in Sentences d.35; according to Jerome [actually Pelagius himself, in a book once attributed to Jerome, On the Faith to Pope Innocent n.10, “We execrate too the blasphemy of those who say that something impossible for man has been commanded by God”] - ‘let him be anathema who says that God has commanded impossibilities’; therefore, just as it is possible to avoid one sin and transgression against one precept, so it is also possible to avoid any of them.

12. Response is made [Aquinas, Alexander of Hales] that when someone is in mortal sin it is not possible for him, while he remains in sin, to keep the precept, but it is possible for him to prepare and dispose himself for grace, by which, once given, he can keep the precept; and thus, if he did not prepare himself, the lack of preparation is imputed to him as sin, as Anselm illustrates [Why God became Man 1.24] with his example of a servant throwing himself into a well [sc. so as not to go to the market as he was bidden].

13. Another response [Bonaventure] is that although one could, while remaining in mortal sin, keep the precept as regard fulfilling it, yet not as regard the intention of the command giver, because the intention of the command giver was that by fulfilling the precept one attain the end, but one does not attain the end by observance of the precepts unless one is observing them through charity.

14. Against this [n.13]:

If God by his precept intended to oblige everyone to observe the precept through charity, then whoever does the work of the precept but not through charity sins mortally -and this both when what is in question is a negative precept, to which one is bound always and at all times (and if one is bound to do it through charity, then, by not doing it through charity, one sins mortally), and when what is in question is an affirmative precept, to which one is bound at some time (if one does not at that time do it through charity one sins mortally); and thus, if anyone has committed mortal sin and afterwards avoids killing ‘because God commanded not to kill’, and afterwards avoids stealing ‘because God commanded not to steal’, he sins mortally - and if afterwards he keeps the Sabbath ‘because God commanded it’, he sins mortally. But to say this seems to be nothing other than to make perverse everyone who has once committed mortal sin, so that he does not do afterwards any work good in its kind [cf. d.7 nn.28-29] (to which, however, he is otherwise bound [nn.34-37, 47]), although he is nevertheless advised and admonished to do the opposite, namely to do works good in their kind because these works dispose him to obtaining grace more quickly and easily.

15. Likewise, someone existing in charity can do a work of a precept not moved to it then by charity but by natural piety and meekness (or by something else), not actually then carrying it out for the ultimate end, so that the fulfilling of the work of the precept would not be meritorious for him. But if he were also bound to keep the precept according to the intention of the command giver, how then could he be attaining the end?

He would be bound at that time to merit and he would be sinning mortally at that time by doing such a work (a work good in its kind and by precept), which is absurd.

16. The same argument can be made against the first response [n.12], because if we posit someone not disposing himself to grace but being still then in a state of guilt, he cannot keep himself from guilt; therefore it is impossible for him during that time to keep himself from guilt - which is false, because all guilt is voluntary. But if he can during that time keep himself from guilt (which at least seems obvious as far as the kind of work commanded by the precept is concerned), the argument before given returns [n.14], which suffices to excuse him from mortal sin.

2. Against the Two Versions of the Argument in Particular

17. I argue against these two versions in particular, and first against the first [n.9]: If one can at this particular time guard against this mortal sin and against that mortal sin and, while guarding against this one, guard against all of them (and likewise at the next following time and so on at all times), then, if one can guard against this sin and against that, one can guard against all of them at once. The assumption that one can guard against this mortal sin and against that is plain, because the will cannot simultaneously have distinct acts of consent, which are required for mortal sin; and so, while it has a distinct act of will to resist this mortal sin, it has no act of will for so willing any other mortal sin that it mortally sins by this willing. Again, by preserving oneself from one mortal sin, one becomes stronger for resisting other sins. Therefore if one can guard against this sin, which one is afraid of (or which one sins by), much more can one guard against it otherwise, and so on in other cases.

18. Against the second way [n.10] I argue as follows: at the time when one could deliberate about this sin a, then either one can deliberate about a, and the result is that, while one is deliberating, one is not sinning mortally (also when deliberation is complete, one can, according to you, guard against actual sinning with the sin a, or with any other sin at that time) - or one is unable to deliberate about a at the time of deliberation, and so one will not possess the use of reason.

19. But if you say that one cannot deliberate rightly because the intellect is blinded, this seems absurd, because a single mortal sin does not make anyone intemperate with general intemperance, for one day does not make a summer [Aristotle Ethics 1.9.1098a18-20], and one act of vice does not make a man generally vicious or blind generally as a result to all principles of doable things; therefore he can have correct deliberation about many things he is tempted by, notwithstanding the fact that he is in one mortal sin.

20. Likewise, vices are not so connected that one sin would make one blind to the principle of action for acting well, because it is also not the case that a single sin corrupts the appetite by inclining it per se to another sin; rather, along with one particular sin can stand an acquired habit contrary to another sin, because a single mortal sin does not corrupt the whole habit of virtue. Therefore by such habits acquired both about the same doable thing and about other ones, one can rightly judge and deliberate, and so at the time of deliberation one can rightly deliberate or be tempted as regard the same sin or as regard another; and if one could rightly deliberate so as not to sin by construed consent [n.10], one can, according to you, guard against every sin; therefore one can do so simply.

C. Scotus’ own Response

21. In response to the question it can be said, speaking of a sin of commission, that sin can be taken in one way for the elicited act of deformity itself, and in another way for the stain of sin (or for the abiding guilt) that remains after the elicited act until the sin has been destroyed by penance [cf. above d.7 n.84].

22. I say that in the second way free choice cannot of itself guard against all mortal sin in this present state, because a soul without grace is stained by some sin (whether original or actual), from which it is not freed save by grace.

23. But if the question is asked whether this is because of an immediate opposition between guilt and grace, I say no, because guilt and grace were not immediate opposites in the state of innocence (for at that time someone could have been in a purely natural state, being both without grace and without guilt; so these are in no way immediate opposites) - nor even are they immediate opposites by comparison to the power of the maker, because God can restore the will, after it has sinned, to the kind he could have made it to be. Rather, the fact that the will is only freed from sin by grace [n.22] is because of the universal law that now [in this present state] no one’s enmity is remitted unless he becomes not merely a non-enemy but also a friend,“A sinner is a non-enemy by remission of guilt, but a friend by infusion of grace” 4 d.16 q.2 n.2. God so acts now by his ordained power, but he could by his absolute power [d.7 nn.52-56, 1 d.17 n.164] act in the other two ways listed here in n.23. ³⁶ made acceptable to God by sanctifying grace.

24. If an objection be raised about how God could remit guilt without giving grace (for if a change is not posited in the person justified, there seems to be a change in God), the response is twofold.The responses are not given, but see n.23 again. The Vatican editors also refer, among other places, to 4 d.16 q.2 n.11, “The divine will can will affirmatively for this man at moment a and negatively for him at moment b without any change in the divine will.” ³⁷

25. As to the first way [n.21] see Henry Quodlibet 5 q.20.The relevant passage from Henry is given by Scotus in the Lectura 2 d.28 n.21. The Vatican editors give it as follows: “Therefore one must say that man’s free choice, even while he is in mortal sin, can be considered in two ways: in one way on the part of his freedom in itself, in another way as he is exposed to the temptations that come to him. I say that in the first way he can simply guard against falling into another mortal sin, in the sense that he falls by no necessity into it; but if he does fall, he falls voluntarily such that, if he did not fall voluntarily and he did fall, then by falling he did not sin. I say in the second way that he cannot guard himself for long without it being necessary either that he fall soon enough into mortal sin or that he receive grace from God by which to be able perfectly to guard himself and be liberated from mortal sin. But whichever of these happens to him, it happens to him only by consent of his will. For whoever is in mortal sin, whether one or many...is, after he is in sin, either well disposed, as far as concerns himself, with respect to the sins he has committed...by detesting them to the extent he can in his present state, or not well disposed. If he is well disposed, it cannot be that he should for long be thus well disposed about his moral acts without God moving his free choice by some motion of prevenient grace [gratia gratis data] to assenting simply to the good. And if he does not resist, God at once confers sanctifying grace freeing him from all sin; but if he resists, he at once sins mortally by contempt and ingratitude for the divine call. And as I said about someone in mortal sin, so I say about someone only in original sin, supposing however it is possible for him to sin venially before he sins mortally.” ³⁸

26. And this opinion can be confirmed by the fact that the precept ‘Thou shalt love the Lord they God etc.’ is the first, on which hang all the law and the prophets [Matthew 22.37-40, Deuteronomy 6.5]. The will then is bound to sometimes eliciting an act of this percept, so that there cannot always be omission of the act of this precept without mortal sin; but whenever the will executes an act of this precept (even in an unformed way) it disposes itself by congruity to sanctifying grace; and it will either resist this grace when offered and sin mortally, or consent to it and be justified.Henry Quodlibet 8 q.5, “Now about the process of grace in an adult before baptism, or after baptism in a state of actual mortal sin, one must hold that God anticipates the sinner with prevenient grace [gratia datis grata] as soon as he comes to a use of free choice such that he is able, by deliberation, to do something. And if through his free choice he disposes himself well to prevenient grace, he disposes himself by congruity to God’s bestowing on him justifying grace... If he thrusts this prevenient grace from him, he makes himself unworthy to be further helped, but to be justly more hardened thereby in his sin. If however he accepts it, he disposes himself by justice of congruity to sanctifying grace, which God then and there confers on him, and by which he is cleansed from sin.” ³⁹ This opinion, therefore, gives a negative answer to the question [n.1], not because of an absolute impotency in free choice [nn.5-7], but insofar as the impotency is compared to God who freely offers grace to a free will that is in some way well disposed.

II. To the Principal Arguments

27. To the Arguments.

To the passage from Romans 2 [n.2] it can be said that, if the children of Israel alone were bound to the law of Moses, the rest, the Gentiles, could have lived justly by keeping the law of nature, and then they were ‘a law unto themselves’, that is, by the law of nature ‘written within on their hearts’ [Romans 2.15] they directed themselves in living rightly, just as the Jews did by the written law; but the Gentiles did not live well without all grace, because grace could - ex hypothesi - have been in them without observance of the Mosaic law.

28. As to the next [n.3] the statement of Augustinea can be conceded according to the opinion stated [sc. of Henry nn.25-26]. And to the minor [sc. ‘some sin cannot be avoided’] it can be said that he to whom grace is offered can guard against resisting grace, but he cannot guard against sin; for if he does not resist grace, he is justified; so only this sin [sc. resistance to grace] is what can be guarded against, but when a man is in a sin previously committed, sin cannot be guarded against [see the quotation from Henry in footnotes to n.25 and n.26 above].

a. a[Interpolation] namely that ‘no one sins in what he can in no way avoid’.

29. To the third [n.4] Anselm responds that, as far as concerns the part of free choice, justice can be kept once it is had, although when justice is not had it cannot be kept by free choice alone [cf. d.7 n.85].